Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the convention

Image source, Reuters

A ceremonial roll call has begun, with state delegates from each state - as well as US territories - symbolically casting a vote for Kamala Harris.

For each state, representatives are giving short speeches about why they support Harris and Walz.

Across the floor, thousands of people are waving electronic, coloured wrist bands.

A DJ - who identified himself as DJ Cassidy - is urging delegates to "pass the mic across the nation" as he switches the soundtrack every few minutes.

It's occasionally hard to hear the speeches over the roar of the crowd. It's very much a party atmosphere here tonight.

Mike Wendling
Reporting from Milwaukee

Here at the Harris rally in Milwaukee, we are getting a live feed of the roll call from Chicago.

You can watch the roll call live as well, at the top of this page.

Emma Vardy
Reporting from the convention

Conventions are great for running into people, and I just stumbled across former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who has been attending the DNC to participate in a discussion panel, calling it “a real privilege to be here witnessing this moment in time”.

She gained a lot of international popularity as the world’s youngest female leader when she was NZ's PM, and is now living in the US and is soon to be releasing a book.

She’s declined a lot of media requests and has been keeping a reasonably low profile, so I’m afraid I failed in my journalistic endeavours to obtain an exclusive interivew about the US election race.

But she invited my producer and I to sit down and instead we had an interesting off the record chat about authenticity (when it comes to leaders), having babies, and continuing doing high profile jobs.

Which was probably far more memorable.

Right, back to the politics.

Brandon Drenon
Reporting from the convention floor

Image source, Bernd Debusmann Jr/BBC

A mysterious man behind a microphone just told a crowd of tens of thousands of people: “Please do not move”.

The man on United Center’s PA system was attempting to quiet and still the crowd for a panorama photo.

He had to plead with the audience several times before finally grabbing a satisfying photo, though absolute stillness was likely not achieved.

“This is probably the hardest group photo anyone has ever had to take,” the DNC volunteer next to me said.

Alex Lederman
Reporting from Milwaukee

Image source, Alex Lederman / BBC

The DJ is hyping up the crowd ahead of Kamala Harris’ rally here in Milwaukee.

“Are y’all excited to be here today?” the local DJ asks to huge cheers.

Music is blasting with attendees on their feet, dancing. Songs have include Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman!”, Pink’s “Get this Party Started”, and Jennifer Lopez’ “Let’s Get Loud”.

The stands in this more than 17,000 seat stadium are filling up. Everyone in the audience is wearing a wristband flashing red, white and blue in unison with all the others.

Spotlights are circulating over the crowd. Some are trying to start a wave.

A group is filling the pit on the ground floor directly in front of the stage. They’re looking up at the word ‘FREEDOM’ plastered on every screen in the stadium.

Harris will speak to the stadium full of people while the DNC continues back in Chicago.

Stick with us, we will be bringing you updates from both events.

John Sudworth
North America Correspondent, reporting from Chicago

Image source, John Sudworth / BBC

I'm outside the building housing the Israeli Consulate in downtown Chicago, where a pro-Palestinian demonstration is due to begin in about an hour's time.

By my own quick headcount there are at least 140 police officers at the ready, lining both sides of the street and standing in groups at the nearby junctions.

Dozens of members of the media are here too. But so far, the only sign of any protest is a single, lone protester, 62-year-old Diane Thodos.

Holding a "Save Gaza" placard, she tells me she's travelled here from the Chicago suburb of Evanston.

Mike Wendling
Reporting from Milwaukee

Image source, Mike Wendling / BBC

If Chicago Democrats are hyped up, the response from Milwaukee Democrats is something like: “Hold my beer”.

The Fiserv Forum here is filling up fast, the music is pumping, and there’s about an hour to go before Kamala Harris takes the stage. The Democrats are hoping 15,000 people will show up tonight.

Large signs reading “Freedom” line the arena, and we’ll see highlights from Chicago on the big screen.

Judy Amos, a retired US Army nurse, corrects me when I suggest the crowd might be a little excited.

“I am so very excited to be here, and I’m so glad there’s so many people who haven’t drunk the Trump Kool-Aid,” she says. “When I hear him question Kamala Harris’s race, I think he doesn’t know anything about our history, or about American history.”

She’s waiting in the line for food next to Irene Parthum, a retired prosecutor, who tells me she volunteered for the Biden campaign but quickly shifted gears once the president ended his quest for a second term.

“We know what the mission is,” she says. “I was on a call with people from 47 different states, there were people crying, but the next day we all went back to work.”

The Milwaukee rally will be happening at the same time as the convention in Chicago.

Image source, BBC / Mike Wendling

Phil McCausland
Reporting from the convention

Those watching the convention will get the opportunity to see the Democratic delegations from each state and US territory perform in a "celebratory roll call" vote later tonight.

The roughly 4,700 party delegates, who are in charge of formally nominating their Democratic presidential candidate, will take to the floor - for the first time since 2016 - to announce who they intend to support.

DNC organisers said the vote is "celebratory" because Vice-President Kamala Harris officially won the Democratic presidential nomination in an online vote almost two weeks ago.It was held then because of an Ohio candidacy deadline.

Despite this roll call lacking real weight, the essentially re-staged vote that will happen tonight is supposed to have much more of the pomp, circumstance and fun that was a regular feature of votes in past conventions.

Democratic National Convention Committee Executive Director Alex Hornbrook told reporters that the vote will give each state and territory "a chance to shine, while also introducing a number of new, innovative, exciting elements that will harness and display energy and excitement behind the Harris-Walz ticket".

Former US First Lady Michelle Obama is among the Democratic Convention's headliners set to speak tonight.

The BBC's Katty Kay looks at why her speech is even more anticipated than her husband Barack Obama's - and whether we'd ever see the popular Democrat back in the White House.

Image source, Reuters

Hip-hop star and actor Common is now on the stage performing. The Chicago native is the second musical act of the night, after Patti LaBelle performed earlier.

You can watch along live at the top of this page.

Phil McCausland
Reporting from the convention

Image source, Getty Images

Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate in 2016, just walked by the BBC booth here at the convention.

He said that he feels very good about the fresh Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, but the Virginia senator said he is watching how engaged young voters are ahead of November.

"My experience from a youngster to now is that when young people engage, things get better," he told a gaggle of reporters.

"So energy among young people is one of the measures that I use for whether the system is working the way it should."

The senator also felt positive about his own re-election campaign. He is seeking a third term and is considered the heavy favourite against Republican challenger Hung Cao.

Brandon Drenon
Reporting from the convention

Image source, Reuters

American R&B sensation Patti LaBelle has just hit the stage, kicking off the evening.

Her presence sent a jolt of energy through the growing crowd still filing into the United Center.

She’s warming up the audience for a big night headlined by Barack Obama.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the convention

Image source, Bernd Debusmann Jr/BBC

A few hours ago, I visited a large shelter for migrants in Chicago, which currently houses dozens of predominantly Venezuelan migrants, including large numbers of women and children.

While the migrants currently housed there are only vaguely aware of the ongoing DNC, they are very aware that immigration, the border and conceptions of "migrant crime" play a prominent role in the US political debate.

Yelitza, a Venezuelan mother of four who fled her country after another son of hers was killed while participating in a protest march, said she feels that migrants are unfairly demonised by politicians, who don't understand the reasons that many left their countries.

"The trip was extremely hard. The jungle. Criminals in Mexico. Cartel members wanted to rape my niece. I did the trip with four little kids," she said. "Things are hard here too. I thought it would be something else, but all I feel is hunger."

"We're not here because we like it, or because I want to. Everyone needs to understand that," she said. "My country is in a disastrous situation. We only came here to give our children a future."

Phil McCausland
Reporting from the convention

Most voters' relationship with the Democratic National Convention is through a television screen, but the Harris campaign says that it is an important organising tool as well.

Harris-Walz Communications Director Michael Tyler told reporters earlier that they've used it to energise volunteering ahead of the convention.

They held 2,800 weekend organising events in battleground states just before the convention in which they "had over 10,000 volunteers make nearly 900,000 calls and knock on almost 150,000 doors".

"That's over one million voter contacts in just one weekend leading into the convention."

Madeline Halpert
Reporting from the convention

Image source, Getty Images

One of Donald Trump's fiercest rivals is wandering the halls of the DNC.

Michael Cohen was Trump's personal attorney and one of his closest confidantes before the two had a major falling out when Cohen began to face legal troubles over his business dealings with Trump.

Cohen recently testified against the former president at his business fraud trial in New York. His testimony was key for prosecutors to secure the first-ever felony conviction of a former president.

Cohen told the court that Trump had directed him to falsely classify reimbursements for a hush-money payment to a porn star as legal expenses. You can read more about the case here.

In the years since their fallout, Trump and Cohen have exchanged a number of insults with each other over social media, and Cohen has proven a willing witness to Democrats seeking to investigate Trump over a variety of matters, including the 6 January riots.

Madeline Halpert
Reporting from the convention

Image source, Voters of Tomorrow

A number of youth organisers are attending this week's convention in Chicago.

One of them is Santiago Mayer, a 22-year-old, who says he decided to found Voters of Tomorrow after noticing his high school classmates were not particularly politically engaged.

"Politics is very inaccessible to young people, and we wanted to be able to both represent the views of young people in politics, as well as make it much more accessible," he tells me.

Mayer says he's seen a surge in enthusiasm from young people since Harris entered the race.

"We're not only voting for the first woman, we're voting for the first black woman, we're voting for the first South Asian woman," he says. "She represents a lot of firsts."

Mayer's organisation is helping turn out young voters by sending text messages, making phone calls, recruiting influencers to spread their message and other paid media campaigns.

Image source, Getty Images

This week at the DNC will be a star-studded series of events, and tonight in particular, the crowd will hear from a man who has captivated Gen Z.

Jack Schlossberg, the only grandson of former President John F Kennedy and son of US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, will deliver remarks early in the night.

Schlossberg has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, where he has posted videos of himself opening a coconut and randomly breaking out into song.

The Harvard and Yale graduate was recently named a political correspondent for Vogue, where he's written a series of columns.

Phil McCausland
Reporting from the convention

The Democratic Party released the party platform on Sunday, but it does not appear to have been updated to reflect that Joe Biden has dropped out of the race - or Vice-President Harris's own preferences.

The document makes it clear that the platform was voted on by the Democratic National Convention’s Platform Committee before Biden stepped aside last month.

It talks about the 2024 election as "a choice between two very different economic visions for America: Donald Trump, who sees the world from his country club at Mar-a-Lago; and Joe Biden, who sees it from kitchen tables in Scranton like the one he grew up around".

There are further differences on subsidies for first-time home buyers, the scale of child tax credits, among other issues.

It also does not include an arms embargo on Israel that pro-Palestinian protesters and uncommitted delegates have demanded ahead of and during the convention.

The platform calls for an "immediate and lasting ceasefire" and a "two-state solution that ensures Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state with recognized borders and upholds the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own".

Harris-Walz Communications Director Michael Tyler said: "Obviously the platform was voted on before the switch to Harris. This is not how the process normally plays out."

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the convention

Image source, Getty Images

Earlier today, former President Donald Trump hit the campaign trail in Michigan. He said he watched the DNC "in amazement" last night, and used his own event to rail against his opponent, Kamala Harris.

Speaking to a largely subdued crowd in the town of Howell, Trump said he was in disbelief as Democrats "tried to pretend that everything was great".

"The crime was great. The border was great," he said. "There wasn't a problem. No inflation. No nothing."

Trump also claimed that "crime in America is out of control" and accused Harris of a "Kamala crime wave", although he provided no evidence.

BBC Verify has fact checked Trump's previous comments about crime. Violent crime was down 6% in 2023 and there was a significant drop of 13% in the murder rate, according to preliminary FBI data.

These statistics aren’t a complete picture as some local police departments have not yet submitted their figures. The official FBI figures for last year will be released in October. You can read more of BBC Verify's fact checking here.

Trump's visit to Howell also raised some controversy over the town's historical links to white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan.

Asked by reporters about the visit, Trump pointed out that Biden visited the town in 2021.